Another tip in a series provided by the Offices of Information Systems & Computing and Audit, Compliance & Privacy.

Data Privacy: Look Out for Yourself—Data Privacy Day is January 28!

International Data Privacy Day on January 28 kicks off an entire month dedicated to data privacy awareness. Now is an excellent time to take practical steps that offer you a greater degree of control and protection over who sees your personal information. 

Modern society encourages sharing your pictures, activities and other information on social media and through various apps. It is also the age of smart technology for you and your home. Here are some important considerations when using these technologies: 

Sharing Your Information with Apps and Websites

Understand how you are sharing information with social media platforms, apps and websites. Remember, not only are you sharing pictures with friends and family via social media, but you are also sharing your personal information with the social media platform and potentially their third-party service providers as well.  

To learn more on how to take control of this information sharing by configuring your privacy and security settings for specific social media platforms, go to https://staysafeonline.org/stay-safe-online/managing-your-privacy/manage-privacy-settings/

Smart Technology and Your Information

Your personal device or smart technology may be sharing your data with apps and websites without your knowledge. This sharing can be the automatic default setting from the moment you begin using a personal device or smart technology. Some sharing may even occur when you are not actively using the technology. 

For increased data privacy, you may need to manually adjust some of the settings on these types of devices.

• Learn about privacy and Apple’s personal devices at https://www.apple.com/privacy/control/
• Find information on Android devices at https://support.google.com/android/answer/6179507
• For smart home devices such as speakers, go to https://www.consumerreports.org/privacy/smart-speaker-privacy-settings/

Penn Privacy Website

To learn more about how to protect Penn data as well as your own data, please visit Penn Privacy at http://www.upenn.edu/oacp/privacy/

For additional tips, see the One Step Ahead link on the Information Security website: https://www.isc.upenn.edu/security/news-alerts#One-Step-Ahead